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Sunday, February 19, 2017

'West' from SanderS: 80's Pulp Revealed Part I

Hoi,Okay, well you have probably seen my
shenanigans regarding my 80's Pulp Project and I have been a bit shady
about it. This is mainly because I wanted to build up a bit of suspense
but also because I am working towards two highlights: my side duel with
Iannick, for which we both do one side of this project: me the goodies,
Iannick the baddies and this post which I initially had wanted to do for
the "East"Theme Round.Anyway, what am I all about? We
need to go back to my younger years when my brother and myself still
ived at home and were not yet interested in girls but rather in action
figures. Star Wars (my favourites) were not available or very expensive
where we lived and I was very into LEGO so none of them were added to my
toy collection. My brother discovered GIJoe toys and when the Sunbow
cartoon series was aired over here we were sold. All our pocket money
went towards additions to that toy line. After hitting puberty, he went
on towards other things and I had shifted towards wargaming and the Joes
were al about forgotten. Then when he got his first real job he
suddenly had money and started building his collection and obtaining all
the stuff we had always wanted. I resisted this expensive hobby since I
had one already, but did dream what would happen if one day I was able
to combine the wargaming hobby with the Joe universe. Enter the
internet, a community was found of like minded individuals who had made
Joe and Cobra figures from available miniatures, Hasslefree and Crooked
Dice are great suppliers of these.Then one of the guys
on there, who's a gifted sculptor, decided to do a range of figures for
himself but in order to pay for the moulds and casting, allowed a elite
few of us to chip in and get a bunch of those figures as well. I
obtained a substantial load of them and am slowly painting them up.
Today I present you my take on the East and West. Because what we in the
West do very well is misrepresent other cultures. We do love to think
in stereotypes and are very capable to ridicule and misrepresent the
best in other cultures for our amusement. I will not go into that
because just once in a while one of us (more precisely the great Larry
Hama) gets it so right! Amongst the biggest heroes within the Joe
universe are without a doubt that prime representatives of the Japanese
culture: the Ninja, Snake Eyes
and Stormshadow. It is them I will represent here and just to be sure,
let me repeat: these figures are NOT commercially available on the open
market.

So
that's my take on the West's take on the East ;-) The pictures are not
great and specially Stormshadow (the white one) does not come out as
good as he is in real life.I made them fight it out in a Japanese style house/ dojo and you decide whether you think it worked out well enough. Cheers Sander

This is just terrific Sander. I was too old for the GI JOE 'period' (girls, clothes, etc.) but I always love reading other people's reminiscences of their childhood hobbies and how these sometimes get revisited, like these lovely figures here. Thanks for the wonderful entry!